playwriting
iFamily
Before embarking on an MFA in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts, Kate was affiliated with Wordsmith, a playwriting lab sponsored by the LA County Department of Cultural Affairs and locally with the Moreno Valley Spotlighters. She also participated at the Ruskin Group’s playwriting lab.
Besides numerous local productions, Kate’s work has appeared at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, Stella Adler Theatre and Ensemble Studio Theatre in Los Angeles. For seven years, Kate was involved with UC Riverside’s Gluck Program, writing plays for student actors that toured local elementary schools, bringing theatre to thousands of arts-hungry students in the Inland Empire. All told, she’s had twenty plays produced.
sumi's house
Sumi Harada, a first generation Japanese American, is not convinced her family’s story is a treasure worth sharing. The play chronicles the Harada family’s pioneering struggles in Riverside, California and was informed by Mark Rawitsch’s non-fiction book, The House on Lemon Street: Japanese Pioneers and the American Dream.
The play ran as part of UCR’s Gluck touring program, and was subsequently produced by the Riverside Metropolitan Museum, both in February and August of 2014. In 2017, Sumi's House was awarded a prize by the Beverly Hills Theatre Guild.
The Press Enterprise: Play puts Harada family’s story at center stage
Orange Grove
In Orange Grove, Clementine Hale fights the bank, her heart and ghosts from the past to save her family’s 100 year-old orange grove from destruction. Her childhood friend, Jose Garcia becomes her biggest rival for the land. While both have a unique claim to the history of the grove, only one has a place in its future.
Orange Grove was produced at the University of California Riverside. An excerpt was published in the anthology Orangelandia: The Literature of Inland Citrus (2014).
